This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Ottawa’s national security questionnaire doesn’t include the most logical options — like scrapping the no-fly list

Sulemaan Ahmed plays video games with his 6-year-old son Syed Adam Ahmed at their home in Markham in January. The Liberal's online survey and green paper about Bill C-51 fails to mention the need to reform terror watch lists, the kind that flags Syed everytime he flies with his parents. (Todd Korol / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Making sense of the federal government’s online national security quiz is not easy.

The Liberal government, which during last year’s election campaign had promised to scrap significant portions of the anti-terror law known as Bill C-51, now says it wants to see what Canadians have to say before acting.

To that end, according to a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, the government has held 27 face-to-face consultation sessions. More are in the offing.

But the jewel in the crown for Justin Trudeau’s very modern government is an online questionnaire. Here, the Liberal government has received 9,500 individual responses and 9,300 bulk submissions.

I’m surprised it got that many. Canada’s anti-terror legislation is both complicated and technical.

Article Continued Below

What, for instance, is a lay person supposed to make of this question in the online quiz: “Do the current Section 38 procedures of the Canada Evidence Act properly balance fairness with security in legal proceedings?”

Mind you, the online consultation does include a so-called green paper written in passably clear English that purports to describe how the current system works.

But like Goodale himself, this green paper exudes a soothing, untroubled tone suggesting that — in the end — the law as written is pretty sensible and, at most, needs only a few tweaks.

The verdict of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, that the explanatory green paper “reads like it was drafted by a public relations firm,” may be harsh. But it’s easy to see how the organization came to that conclusion.

The section on Canada’s notoriously flawed no-fly list, for instance, makes it sound almost rational.

“Under (Bill C-51),” it reads, “the government can use the passenger protection program — an air passenger identity screening program — to identify individuals who pose a threat to transportation security or who are seeking to travel to commit certain terrorism offences.”

Some are simply not allowed to board. They are on the no-fly list proper. Others, on what the B.C. association calls the “slow-fly” list, must go through extra layers of security.

What the green paper doesn’t say is that, while it is easy to get on either the no-fly or slow-fly list, it is hellishly difficult to get off.

That was made painfully obvious in January of this year after a Markham family reported that their six-year-old son, Syed Adam Ahmed, had been repeatedly held up at Pearson International Airport because his name appeared to be on a terror watch list.

After the case made headlines, Goodale promised to act. But even he couldn’t get the boy off the list. Two months later, the child was stopped again at Pearson.

The government’s green paper doesn’t mention Syed Adam Ahmed. Nor does it mention that Bill C-51 tripled the amount of time — from 30 to 90 days — that a person can be on a watch list without review.

Nor does it mention that it is almost impossible to find out if you are on such a list because it is illegal for anyone to tell you.

You can appeal to the minister if you think you are on a watch list. But he doesn’t have to answer you.

You do have the right to go to court if you get no satisfaction otherwise. But chances are the judge’s verdict will be decided on the basis of secret evidence you don’t get to see.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association makes the compelling point that the entire no-fly/slow-fly apparatus makes little sense. For one thing, there is no evidence it has made flying safer.

Those on these lists, the association writes, are “deemed too dangerous to fly but too harmless to be arrested.” They are restricted from boarding aircraft, but freely allowed onto buses and trains.

In its own explanatory gloss entitled “A different shade of green paper,” the civil liberties association argues that even without no-fly lists the criminal code contains provisions that allow the authorities to deny air travel to those deemed dangerous.

It says the no-fly and slow-fly lists should be scrapped.

Tellingly, repealing this part of the anti-terror law isn’t one of the options offered by the government’s online consultation quiz.

Ditto with other controversial sections of Bill C-51, including one that gives the Canadian Security Intelligence Service extraordinary authority to break the law.

The Liberals acknowledged many of Bill C-51’s fatal flaws when they were in opposition but voted for it anyway. Now that they are in government, they are willing to tinker with it.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com